31 Fates Worse Than Death! (#28: Stuck)

Imagine that you lost your job and your house in the same day. Imagine that you were then hit by an obnoxious nurse (Mena Suvari), who proceeds to drive home with you embedded in her car's windshield and then leave you to die in her garage as she goes about her business and occasionally returns to quite literally nag you to death.

It would kinda suck. This is what Stephen Rea has to endure in Stuart Gordon's remarkably unpleasant thriller, Stuck, and suffer he does. Though based on a true story of a woman who caused a hit-and-run and then let the man die in her home instead of notifying authorities, I doubt that the real-life criminal was nearly as selfish and shrill as the corn-row-wearing Suvari manages to be here, and all of the extra hell that her character puts Rea through only earns him an increasing rooting interest on the viewer's part.

After all, he's just a good man having one really bad day. I'm not saying that anyone deserves such a situation, but Rea is a pity magnet from the start in a way that a genuinely homeless individual, your token wino or something like that, would be harder for the audience to know and care for beyond obvious concern. Our Mr. Nice Guy, though -- his fate is almost worse than death because he seems to have done so little to deserve it.